Chapter 11
Mae told Bobby and Janet that she and my father were going to a wedding, and that was why they had to dress up.
She said the groom was someone my father worked with, and they wouldn’t know the bride.
She made fun of herself for completely forgetting about the wedding until that morning.
They would need to stop in town, she said, for a gift.
Bobby was more than happy to stay home, but Janet got upset and said she wanted to go, as she’d had a good time at her mother’s wedding to my father.
She remembered dancing, and also that there’d been cake.
“This one won’t be fun,” Mae said. She stood outside our room, waiting for my father to finish dressing.
She wore a hat with a mesh veil, white gloves, and a long jacket over her blouse.
She did not appear pregnant, and I knew this was as she intended.
Earlier, she’d had on rouge, but she’d asked me if it was too much, and I’d thought of Mrs. Lifton, what she would think, and told her yes.
Mae had washed off the rouge, and she looked better.
But I hated to think of her unease, and how it would only grow as my father drove over the bridge to Snell Isle and saw all the houses with wide, well-trimmed lawns and late-model cars parked in circular drives.
“Will you at least bring me back some cake?” Janet had gotten in bed with me, and she leaned against me, sulking.
Mae said she would try. I heard my father open their bedroom door.
He walked past our bedroom doorway, wearing a tie and his gray sports jacket.
Early that morning, I’d been coming out of the bathroom when he appeared in the hall, still wearing his pajamas.
He’d turned away as if insulted, then waited in silence for me to pass.
Now I heard the jingle of his car keys, and his voice, pleasant in tone, giving some kind of instruction to Bobby.
That was especially painful, hearing him speak to my brother in a regular, fatherly way.
He called to Mae that he was ready when she was, and with those few words, I heard the dread he was trying to cover, and that was more painful still.
—
They returned by half past eleven. From my bed, I heard the front door open, and then Mae telling Bobby and Janet that she hadn’t been able to bring home any cake.
“But anybody who wants a burger and fries better run get in the car. Your daddy’s leaving in two minutes. I’m not hungry.”
“What about Nora?” Bobby asked.
Mae reminded him that I’d missed school the day before, and I shouldn’t be going out for burgers just yet. Janet came back to the room to get her shoes, and when she saw me in bed, she gave me a guilty look.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You go have fun.”
She tugged on one of her braids. “You look sad.”
I told her it wasn’t the kind of sad that needed a burger.
Our bedroom window was open, and I could hear Bobby’s voice out front, and more quietly, my father’s, and then Janet’s when she joined them.
The sound of the engine softened as the car backed out of the drive, and I knew this was something I would remember, the feeling I had as I heard this.
Mae came in and sat on the edge of Janet’s bed.
I sat up and turned to face her, my back to the wall.
She’d already taken off her heels and the jacket, and she held a beer bottle in one hand and an opener in the other.
Before she said a word, she set the bottle on the floor between her bare feet and unpinned the hat from her hair.
Once the hat was free, she placed it beside her on Janet’s bed.
“They think you’re lying,” she said.
I shook my head. My heart was already pounding.
“They said he was home in April, but he was with them the whole time.”
“It was before that.” I could hear my voice rising, insistent. “He stayed two nights in Bradenton before he went home.” I’d already told her this.
She raised her eyes to meet mine. “Nora. They saw him get off the bus.”
“From Tampa. I told you. He took the bus from Bradenton back up to Tampa. Mae! I’m telling the truth.”
She picked up Mr. Sweet, the stuffed bear that Janet slept with, and set him upright on the pillow. “They said he never mentioned you. Not when he was home. Not in his letters from Japan. Which they’re still receiving, by the way. They’re getting letters from him about every other week.”
I was too stunned to reply.
“They said they would write to him today, and they would ask him if he saw you in April. They’ll tell him what you said about Bradenton. But it’ll take a few weeks to get the question to him, and a few more to get his reply.” She shook her head. “You don’t have that kind of time.”
“My word doesn’t mean anything?”
Not to Leonard’s mother. This I already knew. What alarmed me was Mae’s uncertainty. I could see it in her face.
“Nora. They let us know about an incident that happened last October. At their home.”
I covered my face with my arms. It was my own shame attacking. She hadn’t even raised her voice.
“You can imagine,” she said, “what that was like for your father, having to sit there in a stranger’s living room and hear that about his daughter. And to know that they’d known this about you for a year, while we ourselves had no idea.”
I still had my face hidden, but I heard her open the beer bottle. I’d never known Mae or my father to drink a beer before five o’clock. By the time I looked up, she’d finished half of it, and she was staring out the window.
“She’s in Dutch, too, I think. The mother, I mean.
” She set the bottle back between her toes.
“He said she was supposed to tell us, and he wasn’t happy that she hadn’t.
I almost felt bad for her, sitting there all scrawny and silent while he glared at her.
You can tell who’s running the show in that marriage.
But he’s right. She should have told us. ”
I had difficulty squaring Mae’s description of Mrs. Lifton with what I knew of her.
She wasn’t scrawny. She was tall and slender, with the kind of figure Mae usually admired.
I believed my stepmother might be speaking out of anger, or out of loyalty to me.
If it was the latter, I didn’t deserve it.
Mrs. Lifton had tried sticking up for me.
And I turned around and stung her. Twice.
Mae leaned forward and rubbed her forehead as if it hurt.
“Do you want your cigarettes?” I asked. “I can get them.”
“I’ve had four in the last hour.” She lifted the bottle and took another swig. “The good news is there’s a place you can go and have the baby. Those two must’ve guessed why we were coming over. They’d already made some calls.”
“Where?” I was suddenly warm, sweating all over. I pushed the blankets off my legs. “What place?”
“Out of town. Maybe out of state. Wherever there’s an opening. It’s a home for unwed mothers, which is what you are.”
“Can’t we wait to hear from Leonard?”
“Do you know what you’ll look like in another month? We’re lucky we have this option. Apparently, these places have waiting lists. But he’s got somebody he went to school with looking into it.”
I pressed my hand against the mound, warm and firm. “Then what happens?”
“They find a home for it. A good home. And nobody here will know, including Bobby and Janet. We’ll make something up.” She chewed her lip. “I’ll come up with something.”
“I can’t lie,” I said. “You know that.”
She looked at me. “Clearly, you can.”
There was nothing to say to that. When I composed myself, I told her I was sorry. I told her I was grateful for her help, for her saving me. She said nothing. I worried she’d hate me forever, or, at least, never again think of me the same.
“When I say I can’t lie,” I told her, “I’m not saying I won’t try. I’m just saying I’m not good at it.”
“Well, you need to get good at it. Fast.” She stood up, holding out the beer as if she meant to make a toast. “That’s the whole point of sending you away.
So you can come back and hold your head up.
But you have to toe the line. Do your part.
These places aren’t cheap. Even just paying for half of it, we’ll run through our savings. ”
The weight of this felt physical, staggering. “I’ll pay you back,” I said.
She bobbed her eyebrows as if to wish me luck.
“Who’s paying the other half?”
“They are.”
“But I thought—”
“Because of the shower incident,” she said. “Because it happened in their home, and with their son, and because she didn’t tell us. But neither one of them believes this baby has anything to do with their precious son. They were both very clear about that.”
I felt a good strong kick then, not just a flutter. I didn’t move. I didn’t even look down.
“Mae. Does my dad think I’m lying?”
I could see she didn’t want to answer. I took the blow.
“Do you believe me?”
She was quiet for several seconds, and I could see that she was still making up her mind. But she nodded. My relief was small, and temporary.
“It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “Practically speaking, I mean.”
—
The following Tuesday, when Mae and I were again alone in the house, I learned that the Liftons had secured a spot for me in a maternity home in Paterson, New Jersey, and that I would be leaving for New Jersey on a sleeper train that very afternoon.
I still don’t know if the home in Paterson was truly the only place available, or if the Liftons just wanted me that far away.
“It’s good that it’s so far,” Mae said. “You won’t know anyone up there, and nobody’ll know you.”
She said I could use her suitcase, and I should first pack my schoolbooks, and then whatever clothes I could fit around them. She would tell my teachers what she would tell everyone else: Her mother in Arkansas, who lived alone, had taken a bad tumble on the stairs.
“This is actually good timing.” She gestured at her own belly. “People will understand why I can’t go myself, why I have to send you.”